Tag: Work

In recent news, Ha and I welcomed our son Mako in July. Ha and Mako are doing well now, but over the last year as doctors were asking me about my health history, I realized that I really didn’t know mine. From moving to different cities across various continents, whenever there was an offer to get a shot or vaccine, I would just do it because I could never remember. I’m not even sure how I can export old records or ask for them from the different healthcare systems I’ve been in. Legally, I am entitled to these records, but it’s a big gap to getting them.

Doctors have asked me about certain conditions and issues from my past, and I’ll usually just shrug and say, “I don’t…know really.”

Now that I have Mako, I don’t want the same thing to happen to him. It’s a bit scary to realize how little I know about my own history. Thus, I’ve been working with Bitmark on their mobile app Bitmark Health – it’s an aggregator of health data. Right now, it works with importing Apple Health Kit and scans of Physical Documents, and we want to expand the feature and data support so that anyone around the world can have complete historical records for themselves, children, and family members for recordkeeping, research, and sharing with medical professionals.

Basically, no one should feel as helpless as me.

What was important to me, coming from my background as a social networking (see: Facebook / Cambridge Analytics) entrepreneur, was that Bitmark didn’t have access to your data. In Bitmark Health, the data is all stored on the user’s phone, and Bitmark digitally fingerprints this data and records your ownership as a property title on its public blockchain. None of your personal information (health records, identification information) is recorded in the blockchain.

(In case you’re not familiar with blockchain or have just heard of it from Bitcoin, Bitmark’s blockchain isn’t managed or controlled by any single entity, like a government or company. Anyone can contribute to maintaining it, and a good blockchain is incredibly resilient to hacks and changes. Unlike Wikipedia, in which anyone can make changes to records, only you can make changes or legal transfers to your health records. You also don’t need to sign up for Bitmark – your account is stored on your phone via private keys)

Right now, we’re in Beta on Apple iOS (iPhone). If this seems interesting to you, I’d love to get you in on the Beta (or on the list for the Android version) – we appreciate any feedback (what works well, what doesn’t, what features you personally need to make it useful). If you know anyone who would be interested, I’d love to talk to them about our work too – please share!

As with my Minecraft post, I do have an ego-driven need to see my insights proven correct. (Don’t worry, I know I am often wrong) Below is a slide deck I put together in an interview with Facebook for Facebook at Work (now called Workplace) in September 2015.

After 1+ years and only thousands of paying users and questions about what how the site should be used, however, perhaps my Slide 5 was onto something.

Facebook claims it has already signed up “thousands” of paying subscribers to Workplace Premium, spokeswoman Vanessa Chan told CNBC. Facebook’s name recognition and user familiarity could be a major asset that should help it muscle into the marketplace. But the social media site needs to overcome the perception that the site is a productivity killer at work and convince employers that staffers will be using the tool for work, not social purposes.

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I write whatever I feel like, and often do so foolishly. Opinions here are always my own unless explicitly mentioned otherwise.
Professionally, I am a startup warrior and I hold a MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern). I live in the San Francisco Bay Area (California).